NoBa - Management scenarios under climate change - climate change and fisheries projections

The Nordic and Barents Seas Atlantis model (NoBa) simulations run with output from the Regional Ocean Model System (ROMS) covering the period from 1981-2068, represeinting the historical period (1981-2005) and the IPCC RCP4.5 scenario (2006-2068). The fisheries follow the historical fishing pressures from stock assessments for the period until 2017, after which it is represented by different levels of the fishing mortality at maximum sustainable yield; 0.6, 0.8, 1.0 and 1.1. The fishing mortality at maximum sustainable yield is calculated within the model, and is held constant for the period from 2018-2068. Each scenario has 14 replicates, where the growth rate of mesozooplankton is perturbed, using the observed variability from the time series of mesozooplankton in the Norwegian sea for the period from 1995-2017. Atlantis is a deterministic model, and this variability creates as solution space for each scenario. In addition, for each scenario there are two set-ups for the number of species being harvested. One which allows harvest only on todays commercially important species, and one where the number of species being harvested is increase to include also the functional groups 'small pelagic fish', 'large demersal' and 'other demersal' (based on catch statistics), and mesopelagic fish and mesozooplankton (based on intereste in these resources). In total this adds up to 112 simulations. The aim of the study was to explore the impact of climate change and changes in management strategies on the ecosystem of the Nordic and Barents Seas (Hansen et al., 2019).